Company rule in India

Company rule in India was a period of South Asian history from 1757 to 1858 when the British East India Company ruled over the Indian Subcontinent from its capital of Calcutta. Company rule began with the Battle of Plassey in 1757 and ended when the British Empire assumed direct control of India in the form of the "British Raj" following the failure of the Sepoy Mutiny.

Background
Britain's position as an island nation had, paradoxically, prevented it from ever growing too insular. Reliant on trade, it always had to look beyond its own shores. After something of a false start in the reight of Elizabeth I, England's first colonial ventures were across the Atlantic in North America. The 18th century brought territorial gains in Canada, and the establishment of outposts in the Indian Subcontinent by the British East India Company. The Company's fortunes expanded under British officer Robert Clive when Mughal emperor Shah Allam II granted it the revenue rights to Bengal. These acquisitions went some way towards making up for the loss of the American colonies. With industrialization proceeding apace, colonial expansion became ever more essential to Britain, which needed new sources of raw materials and potential markets for its manufactured products.

History
Britain carried its policy of arm's-length imperialism in India into the new century, with the East India Company acting as an occupying power. The conquests continued; the Mughal emperor Shah Allam II, an old man with his authority already much reduced by his defeat at Buxar, was forced to accept British protection in 1804. He was reduced to no more than a puppet of the Company. The power of the Maratha Confederacy was broken in 1818, but still the Company kept up its programme of expansion.

Taking hold
The expansion started in 1824 with the conquest of Burma, which proceeded smoothly. Company troops took Assam, Manipur, and adjacent territories by 1826, but there were setbacks. The First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-42), intended as a war of conquest, ended up an unmitigated disaster. Of the 4,500 men and 12,000 civilian followers who went to Kabul, only one man - military surgeon William Brydon - survived.

Soon, though, the British were back on the offensive. They took Sindh (1843) and Gwalior (1844) before going on to fight two Sikh Wars (1845-46 and 48-49). These consolidated the Company's hold on the Punjab, while a Second Anglo-Burmese War (1852) secured Lower Burma.

Tax and trade
By 1856, 70% of the subcontinent was directly under British rule. In reality, though, British dominance was more or less complete. Treaty arrangements with local rulers typically respected their ceremonial authority, while reserving actual power for the Company itself. Slowly, the Company's role changed from that of a commercial operation doing the minimum policing required to ensure stability, to something very much like a government. Increasingly, its profits were derived more from taxation than from trade. Corruption was endemic either way, although there were intermittent crackdowns, as in the case of Warren Hastings. In 1788, Hastings, the Governor of bengal, was impeached on corruption charges. Although acquitted by the House of Lords, he was disgraced.

Western ways
Britain made great play of its "civilizing mission" - and did try to stamp out suttee (the burning of Hindu widows on their husbands' funeral pyres) and female infanticide. It also suppressed the Thuggee (Thugs), a cult whose members lived as bandits, strangling innocent travellers as sacrifices to the goddess Kali. And, of course, it gave India the benefits of western technology and infrastructure. Roads - of obvious military use - were at the same time beneficial to all. The Company spent £400,000 per year on its road building programme during the late 1840s; this included a tarmac highway between Delhi and Calcutta. Railways, vital for British business, could also be presented as a boon for Indians. Soon the whole subcontinent was crisscrossed by railways.

Rebellion flares up
Many Indians viewed the educational opportunities made available to members of its elite with suspicion. They sensed that the British were intent on educating them out of theri Indian ways, and schooling them in subservience to Company rule. Cultural sensitivity was all-important, given the extent to which the British were outnumbered. Tiny in number compared with the indigenous population, they may have enjoyed immense power but it was precariouslypoised. Even in the army, a few thousand British soldiers had charge of huge numbers of native sepoys. In 1857, the entire edifice very nearly came crashing down - when sepoys rebelled against their officers and a full-scale mutiny erupted. The mutiny threatened the very continuance of British rule.

The British Raj
The aftermath saw a wholesale reorganization of the army in India, with more native-British troops brought in. The East India Company's role as intermediary was replaced with direct rule from Westminster. Queen Victoria was proclaimed the Empress of India. Britain was proud of this "jewel in the crown"; Indian chic influenced everything from furnishings to cuisine. Its future now apparently secure, the Raj (the new official name for British rule) went on with its routines. Officers' families could enjoy elegant rounds of picnics, balls, and banquets. They escaped the heat for cooler hill stations in summer and commanded a large complement of servants, thanks to the abundance of cheap labor.

Aftermath
Most Britons convinced themselves that they were carrying what Rudyard Kipling called the "White Man's Burden" in a spirit of self-sacrifice. There was some anger then, when the 1920s and 1930s brought an intensifying campaign on the part of Indians, who wanted to be free of British rule. World War II changed attitudes - and Britain's position in the world - and in 1947 India became independent. Built for the British Viceroy, Delhi's Rashtrapati Bhavan is n ow the official residence for the President of the Republic of India.